unofficial mirror of help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: rustom <rustompmody@gmail.com>
To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
Subject: Re: An alternative to a monolithic ~/.emacs init file
Date: 8 Nov 2007 11:53:08 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1194544126.425679.261670@e9g2000prf.googlegroups.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <mailman.3126.1194527313.18990.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>

On Nov 8, 6:08 pm, Sebastian Tennant <seb...@smolny.plus.com> wrote:
> Quoth rustom <rustompm...@gmail.com>:
>
> > Could you please elaborate on how this works a little?  [...] I really
> > would like to have a tiny little .emacs file and a bunch of files and
> > directories containing unrelated stuff
>
> If you don't care about autoloads (or you're not sure what they are) and
> you just want a small ~/.emacs, then all you need is this:
>
>   ;;; load dotemacs/*.el
>   (mapc (lambda (f) (load f))
>     (split-string
>       (shell-command-to-string "find ~/elisp/dotemacs -name *.el")))
>
> This routine simply loads each file ending '.el' found under the
> directory ~/elisp/dotemacs.
>
> Sebastian

Thanks. I think I understand autoload. Also I dont want needless
loading at emacs-startup -- its unlikely that in a given session I
will do C and python and ruby and org and tramp and elisp and .....
though I do use all these once in a while. What I dont understand are
magic cookies and how emacs uses them; or more correctly *When* emacs
uses them.  The elisp manual says:

>.These comments do nothing on their own, but they serve as a guide for the command `update-file-autoloads',
> which constructs calls to `autoload' and arranges to execute them when Emacs is built.

Does this mean I have to rebuild emacs if I want to use this ?!

Also what I guess is a related question -- What/Where/How is
loaddefs.el? It does not seem to be a fixed single file -- value of
the variable 'generated-autoloaded-file'  because many a package p
comes with its own p-loaddefs.el.  But then if loaddefs.el is not a
single file but a general class of files we are back to the same
problem that autoload sets out to solve namely:
 -- if emacs does not know about feature x it does not know what to do
 -- if emacs knows about x it does not need to have anything to do

In short I can (I think!) understand elisp code (been writing some for
15 odd years)
What I am unable to understand is what happens at what binding time:
1. emacs development time
2. emacs (re)build time
3. emacs start time
4. feature (first) reference time

  parent reply	other threads:[~2007-11-08 19:53 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 15+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
     [not found] <mailman.2759.1193756709.18990.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
2007-11-07 17:13 ` An alternative to a monolithic ~/.emacs init file rustom
2007-11-08 13:08   ` Sebastian Tennant
     [not found]   ` <mailman.3126.1194527313.18990.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
2007-11-08 19:53     ` rustom [this message]
2007-11-09 14:18       ` Sebastian Tennant
     [not found]       ` <mailman.3180.1194617919.18990.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
2007-11-10 12:18         ` rustom
2007-11-10 17:13           ` Tom Tromey
     [not found]           ` <mailman.3247.1194750639.18990.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
2007-11-11 15:29             ` rustom
2007-11-12 21:56               ` Tim X
2007-11-13  4:21                 ` rustom
2007-11-13  9:26                   ` Tim X
2007-11-14  3:52                     ` rustom
2007-11-13  1:22             ` rustom
2007-11-11  0:09       ` Francisco Miguel Colaço
2007-10-30 15:04 Sebastian Tennant
2007-10-30 20:30 ` Sebastian Tennant

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

  List information: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=1194544126.425679.261670@e9g2000prf.googlegroups.com \
    --to=rustompmody@gmail.com \
    --cc=help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).